TY - JOUR A1 - Vollertsen, F. A1 - Grünenwald, S. A1 - Rethmeier, Michael A1 - Gumenyuk, Andrey A1 - Reisgen, U. A1 - Olschok, S. T1 - Welding thick steel plates with fibre lasers and GMAW JF - Welding in the world N2 - The results of a collaborative research project on laser beam weldability of carbon steels of high sheet thickness are presented. That includes single and multiple pass welding of 16 mm and 20 mm thick plates, as well as the investigation of acceptable tolerances i.e. gap bridgeability and edge misalignment. For the welding experiments fibre lasers with 8 kW, 20 kW laser power and different GMAW-techniques were used in various applications. With the 20 kW fibre laser 16 mm plates could be welded with a single pass, 20 mm required a seam preparation or alternatively preheating of the material. For multi pass welding with 8 kW laser power a joint preparation with a single V-butt joint with a broad root face (Y-groove) was applied. The root pass was always welded with a hybrid process, the filler passes with a hybrid process as well as a GMAW process which produced the best results. KW - Arc welding KW - Carbon steels KW - Combined processes KW - Fibre lasers KW - Gas shielded arc welding KW - GMA welding KW - Multirun welding KW - Reference lists KW - Steels KW - Unalloyed steels PY - 2010 SN - 0043-2288 SN - 1878-6669 VL - 54 IS - 3/4 SP - R62 EP - R70 PB - Springer CY - Oxford AN - OPUS4-21224 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -